


in which digger has crisps

by apprenticenanoswarm



Category: DCU (Comics), Suicide Squad (Comics), The Flash (Comics)
Genre: M/M, warning for attempted suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 04:47:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17135228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apprenticenanoswarm/pseuds/apprenticenanoswarm
Summary: Floyd has a bad day. Digger...helps. Sorta.





	in which digger has crisps

 

The message comes through in the middle of a mission.

It’s nearly midnight. The squad’s lounging around an abandoned train station, waiting for their ride into the undisclosed politically unstable location of the day, where they will have a conversation with President Redacted about his future. If all goes well, it will be a very short conversation.

(The last time Floyd saw Zoe, his clever baby girl was putting together a school project on neo-colonialism and Noam Chomsky. It looked neat. He nodded in agreement as she explained the details to him, her tough little fists clenched and her brown eyes wet.)

Long story short, there’s been a delay. Everyone’s just fucking around until it’s finally time to move. Quinn’s doing a handstand on the edge of the platform and singing quietly to herself. Digger, the useless asshole, is napping on the nearest bench, using his scarf as a cushion and snoring loud enough to wake the very devil.

And Floyd.

Floyd stares at his phone in silence.

After a while, he says, “Star City’s gone.”

Tatsu quits polishing her sword to ask, “What?”

“Star City. It’s gone. It’s a crater,” Floyd elaborates, his tone clipped. “CNN’s reporting that exactly seventeen minutes ago it was vaporized during a battle between Green Arrow and an as yet unidentified alien entity.” 

“Shitty,” Quinn pipes up.

Which is an objectively horrifying way to react to the deaths of millions but he can’t exactly blame her for it. This is just the kinda thing that happens nowadays. Floyd wouldn’t have even mentioned it just before they’re about to enter enemy territory if it wasn’t for…

“Bugger. I liked Star City,” grumbles Digger, stretching and scratching his stubble. “Had a fantastic jam donut there once. Also the best bowel movement of my life in a public lavvy.”

“Any survivors?” asks Tatsu.

Mechanically, Floyd says, “It’s just been confirmed that there were no survivors within a fifteen miles radius of the city centre.”

“My God! It’s so awful,” says June, shivering in her pale pink cardigan.

Tatsu nods. “A truly monstrous crime.”

Floyd doesn’t reply to that. She doesn’t know. Digger doesn’t know. None of them know that Zoe – his Zoe – lives in Star City, that she lives and goes to school right smack-dab in the middle of it.

Right now it’s mid-morning over there. She’d have been in math class. Unless she was sick with flu or something, in which case she’d have been at home, in her bed, with her dog-eared Animorphs books and her pet guinea pig.

Floyd Lawton stares at his phone and digests the fact that his daughter is dead.

“Choo-Choo’s a-comin’,” Quinn singsongs as the sound of the train approaching the station reaches Floyd’s ears.

While the others stretch, gather up their gear and prepare to embark, he does some quick mental calculations. Ten seconds are all he needs to conclude that a train does not have to be traveling very fast to kill a man.

So Floyd drops his phone, flicks away his cigarette, jogs a short distance with his eyes locked on the approaching headlights, and comes to a halt on the edge of the platform. Here it comes. Here it is. Gotta time the jump carefully if he wants it to be quick and painless, if he doesn’t want to be dragged under and ripped to…

And then Digger tackles him at waist height.

 

0

 

Obviously, he doesn’t get to go on the mission. But they can’t take him with them. So he’s tied up and left in the back of the train with Digger to guard him until the others get back. 

Floyd senses that everyone’s annoyed at him for making their day harder than it had to be. Enchantress clearly wishes he’d had more success in his quest to splatter himself over the front of the locomotive. 

Fuck her. Fuck them. Fuck everyone. But fuck Digger especially. The  _one_  time he gets off his fat grubby Australian ass to help and it’s the one time Floyd didn’t fucking want him too. God, the man is intolerable. Motherfucking worthless piece of shit.

“You alright, mate?” Digger asks for the fourth time in an hour. “Want some water? Or crisps? I’ve got crisps.”

Captain Boomerang trying to be compassionate is a bizarre experience. Floyd deeply, truly wishes they could go back to the way things were fifty minutes ago, when Digger had just knocked him down onto the platform and was sitting on his chest, punching him square in the jaw and screaming, “ _How dare you, you prick, how fucking dare you_?” over and over again.

“No,” says Floyd.

“I’m real sorry about your kid.”

Floyd says nothing. Feels nothing. 

Digger chews his lower lip. “I mean…it’s shit, it’s really shit. But there’s lotsa worse ways to snuff it, you know. Hell,  _we_ know that better than anyone. It would have been quick. That’s something.”

Jesus Christ, Floyd hate hate  _hates_  him. Hates  _himself_  for having thought exactly the same thing. Zoe deserved so much better than a death she didn’t even get to see coming. His little girl was a warrior. Should have died like one.

“Sorry for punching you too,” says Digger, and wow, you know you’ve hit rock bottom when Digger Fucking Harkness is apologizing to you. “Just lost my temper. My mum killed herself, ever told you that? Found her in our bathroom. Well, it wasn’t really a bathroom, we couldn’t afford one of those. More just a cupboard with a washing tub and a sponge in it.”

Maybe on a different day he’d be surprised to hear Digger share something so personal with him. Not today. Surprise takes energy he doesn’t have. Maybe if he can get out of these ropes, he can use them to make a noose.

“Not that I’m trying to make today all about me,” Digger clarifies. “I know I’m a selfish arsehole but I honestly can’t imagine anything worse than losing your only…I mean, I’m just trying to…argh, no, no, that’s…hell. I’m shit at this, Floyd.”

He really is.

“She was a good kid, your Zoe. Didn’t deserve what she got.”

“No. She didn’t,” says Floyd.

“You want crisps?”

“No.”

 

0

 

It’s another twenty minutes before the news comes in.

“Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody  _hell_ ,” Digger breathes. “Christ on a bike, Floyd, look at what it says.”

CNN is reporting that the alien entity Green Arrow just managed to destroy with some help from the Flash was a telepath, a mindbender, capable of projecting powerful illusions directly into the brains of thousands of people at once. Star City was not vaporized. It was a diversionary tactic. Star City is completely, totally, utterly fine. No casualties. Not a single one.

Floyd stares at the phone while Digger claps him on the shoulder and laughs his big, booming laugh. “How about that, eh? She’s safe, mate, she’s fine. Whew!”

And Floyd…still feels nothing. It’s a bit worrying. The earlier numbness he can chalk up to grief. But surely he should be jumping for joy now. Surely, at the very least, he should be smiling.

“Floyd?” Digger ventures.

Floyd examines his teammate. A crooked yellow grin takes up most of Digger’s broad, messy face. That should be him. He should be beaming like that. Zoe’s alive. Zoe’s safe. He’s her father, he should – what the hell’s  _wrong_  with him?

Alright, alright, calm down Lawton. Get a grip. It’s probably all down to the fact that this is easily the best news he’s had in his entire lousy pointless life. Really, nothing else comes close. How is a man supposed to react to learning that his world, his reason for being is still there? It isn’t like he’s ever been all that great at expressing his emotions to begin with. Not a skill he’s ever tried to cultivate; not a skill any professional assassin needs.

“Floyd?” says Digger again, now sounding worried. “Gonna say something? You look sort of funny.”

Digger. Now  _there’s_  a man who knows how to put his emotions out there. It’s a quality Floyd grudgingly admires and even more grudgingly envies. Digger never has any trouble letting the whole damn world know when he’s scared, pissed off, sulking, or cheerful. When you’re in Digger’s presence, whatever he’s feeling hits you like a club to the face. And his feelings tend to be contagious. Really, that’s the reason Floyd scolds him when he freaks out during missions. The squad has hung together for this long on the strength of a collective unspoken agreement to pretend all the hideous, traumatizing shit they survive on the daily basis is not substantially worse than the tedium endured by the average white-collar loser. Yeah, they also can’t stand their lousy boss (except she’s not their boss, she’s their owner, their torturer). Yeah, they don’t get paid enough for this crap (except they don’t get paid at all). Yeah, they pretty much hate their jobs (except while the average white-collar loser thinks the worst part of his day is when a co-worker knocks over his coffee, in their case the worst part was when they were strapped down and their bodies were cut open and an army of hands slithered in and stuck bombs in their flesh, made them into slaves, toys, dolls, took away their dignity and their freedom and every last inch of their autonomy and Floyd’s empty enough that he doesn’t really care all that much but sometimes, sometimes he has nightmares about something similar happening to Zoe and oh, oh they linger in his head for days, haunting him, chewing at his guts, making his fingers twitch and tingle and)

Point is.

They keep it together. It’s that or go crazy. It’s that or die.

And it’s honestly pretty impressive that Digger, the team screw-up, the cry-baby, the sissy, the coward, hasn’t done any of those things yet. Doesn’t keep it together. Doesn’t go crazy. Doesn’t die. Impressive. Floyd should tell him that sometime.

“I’m glad she’s alright,” says Floyd, in a monotone, because he figures it’s what Digger wants him to say.

Digger’s brow furrows, his big bushy orange eyebrows scrunching up like shy caterpillars. “Don’t sound glad. You know, Floyd, it’s just me here, yeah? Not Waller. Not Flagg. Just ol’ Digger. You can cut out the killer robot act for once. Your kid’s alive. Your Zoe. I know as well as anyone that she’s the apple of your cold dead shark eye. You were ‘bout to go off and get squashed over her an hour ago.”

“Guess I’m glad I didn’t. Thanks for stopping me.”

Digger chuckles at that, eyes sparkling. “That would have been bloody hilarious, eh? You offing yourself like a silly sod, only for us to find out that she’s not even dead. Proper Greek tragedy. Goes to show you shouldn’t ever make hasty deci…wait, what’re you doing?”

Something strange is happening. Floyd, suddenly feeling like his body doesn’t belong to him, folds almost in half. Hands resting on his knees, staring at the floor but not seeing it, hearing a weird high-pitched note ringing through his brain. It’s _cold_. When had it got so cold? And why is the floor rippling like that-…

It’s only when Digger catches him that Floyd realizes his legs have given way. The actual fuck?

“Hey, hey! Easy.”

Digger says some other stuff that Floyd can’t hear. It’s so, so cold. Is he having a stroke? A heart attack? That’s fucking embarrassing; dying of a heart attack in front of Digger Harkness, a man who’s never eaten a vegetable that wasn’t drenched in grease and ketchup. The asshole’s gonna visit his grave for years just to gloat. Which is actually kind of a nice thought. Not like anyone else is going to visit, except Zoe when she isn’t doing teenager stuff. Hmm, will he even get a grave? Does he really want one? Maybe it’ll be tidier just to be cremated and dumped in a flower pot. Wait, where is he? What’s happening? Why’s he thinking about pot? He’s never used pot. Has Zoe used pot? He should ask her. They haven’t talked about drugs yet.

“Alright, there you go, just suck in that air. There you go. Good. That’s good.”

With some annoyance, Floyd registers the fact that Digger’s talking to him the way adults talk to scared kids during a thunderstorm. Prick. Floyd’s not a kid. Just because he’s having trouble standing on his own for some reason, that doesn’t mean…aah, shit. Shit. He’s crying, isn’t he? Yep. His face is soaked, which probably means he’s been crying for some time now.

How long has Digger been holding him?

_Fuck’s sake. Man up, Lawton._

Cradling him. How long has Digger been  _cradling_  him, here on the floor of this lousy train? On that note, how long has Floyd been untied? The ropes are lying nearby in pieces, so presumably Digger cut them with one of his ‘rangs. Floyd has absolutely no memory of that happening.

“Listen. Don’t you crack up on me,” says Digger, his voice low and rough. “Not you. We need you, dickhead. You’re the only one of us who hasn’t gone completely barmy yet. If we lose you we’re fucked, we’re all fucked.”

Spatial awareness now fully restored, Floyd observes that his arms are wrapped tight around Digger’s shoulders, fists bunched in his disgusting trench coat that reeks of beer and cigarettes, and his head is resting on Digger’s shoulder, a lock of Digger’s curly orange hair tickling his wet, sniffling nose. 

Huh. Well. This is all less than ideal.

Goddamn humiliating, in fact. 

The thing to do is to disentangle himself, wipe the snot off his face, give Digger a manly handshake and spend the rest of his life pretending this never happened.

On the other hand, it’s been a colossally fucked-up day. Floyd is really, really, really fucking tired. As tired as he’s ever been in his life. And Digger’s warm. Warm and far more comfortable than the bed in Floyd’s cell, the only other thing he’s slept on in two years. 

_Fuck it._

“Floyd? You want a drink?”

Floyd snores.

“Ah. Alright, mate. That’s fine too.”

 

0

 

A lot of stuff happens after that. A lot of conversations. A lot of confessions. A lot of confusion, and surprises, and a few nonfatal stabbing because they are who they are.

Suffice it to say; the next time Floyd visits Zoe, he brings Digger along and introduces them.

 

**_end_ **


End file.
